Ocean updates served in stragglers, flocks, and set waves

Archive for the ‘news’ Category

To all ye faithful scribble readers: First you had to accept infrequent (to nonexistent) updates when I started blogging for the Smithsonian over at the Gist. Bless you for following me over there, those of you who did.

And now the Gist has dried up – what’s next? Well, I seem to have found myself in the middle of a new blog about food, science, and culture, also hosted at Smithsonian. So please check in over there for twice-weekly yumminess from me, plus some extras every day by co-blogger Amanda Bensen.

The blog is called Food & Think. Just recently, we’ve learned about where turkeys came from, why your stomach is like a bagpipe, and the last meal of an ancient iceman. Check it out – and thanks for reading.

I’m in Portland, Oregon all week, blogging from the American Ornithologists’ Union meeting. A thousand scientists and 800 presentations covering pretty much everything: from 200 years of Darwin’s finches to the fate of species in a warming future. Read about it at Cornell’s blog.

It’s not exactly all birds, all the time, I guess. The Gist has the story of the folks who ID birds found on the insides of pythons.

I’m still working the Antarctica angle. I just wrote two stories about my time on a windswept, icebound lava plain for the most recent issue of Woods Hole’s magazine, Oceanus. Editor Lonny Lippsett said he thought this might be an opportune time to get into the audio slideshow business, and did I want to give it a try?

One thing led to another and I found myself combing through 1,600 of Chris Linder‘s photos from that week (Dec 10-18, 2007). At first we were talking about maybe a dozen pictures and a short caption spoken by me. But there was so much to say – Chris’s photos caught so much, and reminded me of all the things I didn’t get to write about while I was there. Eventually, I had five and a half minutes of Quicktime video assembled using iMovie. Give it a look and watch me work the Ken Burns effect!

As you may have noticed, everybody’s going batty about gas prices (neat map of prices here). Well, here at s.b.s., we think it’s about time somebody started talking about the rising cost of lobster lines. In Maine, lobstermen returning heaps of salty rope scored $1.40 a pound. And I’m all for it.

The program, sponsored by the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, is part of a last-ditch effort to save the lives of whales without bankrupting lobstermen. Lobster lines and other submerged fishing lines are second only to monster ship traffic in killing whales along the East Coast. And no, the whales aren’t cramming themselves into the little lobster pots – they’re getting ensnared in the miles and miles of submerged crochetwork that connects a fisherman’s many traps.

Like the problem with ship collisions, this is another matter of tragic coincidence: whales finding themselves wedged mutely between survival and commerce. Fishermen keep their hundreds of traps organized by threading them together with lines. And they design the rope to be slightly buoyant, so that it floats a little ways above the bottom, where it won’t get hopelessly snagged on rocks.

Trouble is, it does tend to get hopelessly snagged on whales – wrapped around their flippers or wedged in between their baleen plates like pieces of corn stuck between your teeth. As the whale tries to escape, the situation just gets more hopeless and its bindings tighten around it. The whale may manage to break the lines free, only to limp away and starve to death later.

Entanglement is frightfully common – about 75 percent of all living North Atlantic right whales (plus plenty of other species, like humpbacks) carry scars from fishing gear. Many are still carrying gear with them right now, trailing lines behind them as they try to get on with their lives. The Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies maintains a whale disentanglement team ready to scramble at any moment, armed with an inflatable boat and a pair of snippers on a very long pole (as above).

One seemingly simple solution is to replace much of that fishing line with a heavier variety that will lie along the seafloor and be much harder for a whale to swim through. The fishing industry, looking out for its own interests, has complained that the new lines are too expensive and that they’ll snag on rocks, depriving lobstermen of their catch and of valuable equipment. It’s a valid concern, but similar to the shipping industry’s complaints that tight schedules mean they just can’t afford to slow down and dodge whales.

That’s why I was so glad to see the actual results of the buy-back-your-lobster-line program. Regardless of industry positioning or regulatory strong-arming, it seems that many regular fishermen thought enough of the plan to turn in 270,000 pounds of gear so far, with more on the way. At $1.40 a pound, I’d say everybody comes out ahead. Except, I guess, the lobsters.

About the Scribbler

Hugh Powell is a little weary of big-ticket items like Pluto, the Mars rover, and small fossilized humans getting all the science news coverage. Keep an eye out here for wisps and scraps you won't find anywhere else. Particularly about the ocean, which is really cool and, honestly speaking, much bigger than you think.